Osheen Harruthoonyan
The Dream is a second life; a kind of subterranean realm which is gradually illumined, and where the pale, grave, immobile figures who inhabit a land of limbo emerge from shadows and darkness. - Aurelia
Born in Persia and raised in Athens, Greece and Vancouver B.C., Osheen Harruthoonyan is a Toronto based photographer and filmmaker. Drawing upon his rich experiences living in such diverse cities, he employs a multi-faceted approach towards his artistic practice, investigating memory, history and the deconstructive process of time. Osheen’s work has been featured on Bravo! Arts Channel and his exhibitions in Toronto have consistently been noted as a top show not to miss. Harruthoonyan has also worked as a cinematographer on numerous short films, music videos, and experimental films.
Osheen Harruthoonyan’s sumptuous photographic prints evoke the uncertain, fledgling flashes encountered at the threshold of a dream. Combining traditional large-format photography with a variety of analog photo-manipulation techniques, Harruthoonyan skillfully renders his subjects within ethereally illusive environments. The fastidious striations and cracks of his altered film negatives become esoteric anomalies that hearken to a unique and singular “subterranean realm”. Harruthoonyan’s willingness to take risks within the confines of the traditional photographic process makes this representational capacity possible. Altering each negative by hand, his works crystallize midway between the calculable and the spontaneous, addressing both the systematic and the chaotic. His careful yet playful inventiveness unravels the mysteries of our collective irreconcilable reverie. Harruthoonyan’s creations conjure the lifetimes that exist within moments, and the glimmers of strangeness that give pause to our ever-evolving subconscious states.
Within his work, we witness not only the captured image, but the very process of image-making laid bare.
